April Listopia 2025

Got a little bit hijacked

I almost didn’t listen to Let Yourself Rage with Ada Limon on the Modern Love Podcast because I have writers-writing-about-rage fatigue.

I feel like there’s a lot of rage-filled group pile-on happening in the online lit world. The risk is that readers, listeners, people get rage (and blame) fatigue and stop reading, listening, and talking. What a shame. I love reading personal essays, fiction, and poetry but it’s really hard for me to continue reading a writer who is often preachy and judgmental, in their writing and/or in their social media. Especially if it’s couched in a “we’re all in this together” vibe because nope, not necessarily.

By all means, write your rage and gather the like-minds around you; commiseration can be therapeutic. (This is not sarcasm.) But the bottom line is we all have to do what’s best for our individual mental health so, for some, that may include withdrawing from certain groups and people for a while. Everyone should write or broadcast what they please (within reason) because that’s the essence of free speech but too much of a negative thing can be a negative thing. Realizing when to step away from reading it and writing it is a positive.

I gravitate to hope, positivity, compromise, and compassion. In writing this Substack, I want to bring in not push out. I try to write in a way that doesn’t take my readers and their personal ideology for granted. I don’t expect everyone to think exactly like me; that’s unrealistic, boring, and, frankly, I don’t need the validation. I’m not interested in telling you why “they” are bad and “we” are good.

What I want is to share what I find meaningful, delightful, thought-inspiring, encompassing, universal, helpful, human. I will never sell myself as an expert on any subject because I believe we are all learning every day we live so no one is an expert. We are all different, we are all individuals with individual experiences, and no one set of concepts/beliefs that some genius came up with is right or wrong for every one of us.

Anyway….😆 - I’ll take my rage reading in bite-size pieces, thank you, so this podcast with Ada Limón, at a bit over 30 minutes, was perfect.

“I really love how when the world makes us vulnerable, whether it's through loss or some kind of transformational event, it opens us up to the world again, if we let it, if we let it. Every time I've been hurt, I rage against it. I deny it.

And then eventually, I soften and soften, and it feels like, oh, right, this is the world I'm supposed to be living in, the world where I am paying attention, the world where I feel connected, where I feel, the world where I feel. And I think when we're in that state of receiving, we are more connected and more human, especially as artists, but really for all of us.”

From Modern Love: Let Yourself Rage With Poet Laureate Ada Limón, Apr 9, 2025

What I love in this convo about rage with Ada is that she uses it in her work as a way to connect and heal, not judge and alienate.

April was pretty much all about poetry and NaPoWriMo, as I’ve mentioned before. My reading was pretty scarce. I only read two books, The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout (5 stars) and Anchored by Katy Goforth (5 stars). Look for my interview with Katy this Friday, May 9, in Reckon Review.

I enjoyed a month of British TV with excellent viewings of Love in a Cold Climate (BritBox), Ludwig (BritBox), and Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (PBS). I’m still in mourning over the end of Wolf Hall. American TV was represented with the excellent Dark Winds Season 3 (AMC). I highly recommend them all!

Music-wise I chilled with Direct TV’s New Age channel which is great for lulling one to sleep at night. All that chanting and flute-ing tends to empty the mind. In the daylight hours I pretty much stayed with 80s on 8 on Sirius XM. Which reminds me of a reel sent to me by a friend (Stuart!) of a 16 year old being quizzed about 80s stuff. Did you know the Yellow Pages was a boy band? I wish I could direct you to it but I’m not that tech savvy. It was a good laugh.

I didn’t listen to anything new. But it’s a new month so Ima lookin’! Meanwhile, how’s about a little 80s flashback for your evening….